The twelve-year running saga of “Bugs” and the claim that the guy killed two Bigfoot and buried them may, thankfully, be near its end. We have discussed “Bugs” on Cryptomundo before, here, here, and here.

For those that need a quick summary, one of the fastest can be found via the Art Bell entry at Wikipedia, where you’ll find this five-second story of “Bugs”:

“Bugs” – Aging farmer who has repeatedly told of his account of shooting and burying two Bigfoot creatures back in the 1970s in the Texas Panhandle, initially thinking they were bears. Bugs has mailed a map of the location of this “burial” to Art Bell, to be released to the public upon Bugs’ death. During his first appearance in 1996, Bugs said he had taken a dozen Polaroid photos of the creatures he would be willing to send to Art. None of the alleged photos have yet been made available.

Now, thanks to the blog The Regulator, the rather supposedly unbalanced soul behind “Bugs” has been outed. Ed Hale of Wellington, Texas, the alleged racist owner of Plains Radio, is the mysterious “Bugs.”

An astute Freeper posted a link to a very interesting YouTube video and wondered if the man called ‘Bugs’ that was being interviewed in the clip could possibly be the one and only Ed Hale.

Before I had even listened to the clip, the name ‘Bugs’ definitely sounded familiar. You see, Ed’s photobucket account name is ‘bugshale’ and a little more googling finds some comments about Hillary Clinton and oddly, an ad where Ed is selling some western wear.

After listening to about five minutes of the YouTube, I was convinced and shared with ZeN, and our two Ed Hale specialists neonzx and GreatGrey. They all agreed that it is definitely Ed.

Just as the field seemed to be moving on from the disaster of the Georgia Bigfoot hoax of last summer, this case broke this week. Now, the study of Bigfoot has to be de-bugged, all over again.

Since the “outing,” Ed Hale has semi-”confessed” on his radio program, saying that he was indeed the Art Bell call-in person who used the name “Bugs.” Besides admitting that he is “Bugs,” he has said the killing story is “true.” Evidence? Well, too bad, but it is gone. Hale says that federal agents showed up at his house, made him dig up the bodies, actually bones, and the remains were confiscated. They were spirited away and are being hidden by the government.

Okay. We’ve all been here before.

As the bloggers at The Regulator also noted, Hale’s listeners ate it up and believe every word of it. For more, listen to the Ed Hale mp3 here.

Unfortunately, for the Bigfoot field, Art Bell, and Robert Morgan, this “Bugs”/Hale guy is, by all accounts, one big time jerk.

I am not going to go into all that has been said about Ed Hale online, but an Internet search quickly reveals that he has been called many things, including a “racist freakazoid” by his critics, he is the guy who called Michelle Obama a “gorilla,” he delivered an infamous n-word rant against Barack Obama, and he is one of the people behind the Obama-wasn’t-born-in-the-USA movement. Supposedly, a one-time former Green party contributor, Hale claimed to be a Hillary Clinton supporter, then got a lot of attention for starting a Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McClain group, according to some sites.

This guy Ed Hale stirs up people and gets them to talk about all kinds of political topics, even whether “Obama is one of them lizard people!”

What “Bugs” said on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell has been “heard” in many different ways by the listeners. It can even get people to state, “Ed Hale said in his own words on the Art Bell show that he thought he had killed a couple of ‘mentally retarded’ people that night. I have a feeling that someone got shot that night and I don’t think it was our North American Yeti.”

This all begins to take on some of the worst nightmare moments of the Georgia Bigfoot story, the Bluff Creek Massacre/”topknotch” Bigfoot tale, and the conspiracy theories that the US government black helicoptered out a Bigfoot from the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

By late Tuesday night, the Internet and Bigfoot forums were all abuzz with the “Bugs”/Ed Hale news.

Metafilter had to even label it with silliness as the “Obama-Bigfoot Connection.” This is apparently because Ed Hale’s “current cause is uncovering documentary evidence that President-Elect Barack Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen’ and therefore is ineligible for office. Currently Ed claims to be in possession of Obama’s parents’ divorce decree.” Of course, Hale’s evidence of a birth certificate evaporated into merely a claim of a “log notation,” which seems to have vanished or proves nothing.

Actually, it’s not Obama’s or Bigfoot’s faults that Ed Hale is in their lives. Or even Art Bell’s and Bob Morgan’s.

I’m afraid all of us who were dubious of the “Bugs” story from the beginning will have to weather this storm too.